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Feminist Legal Theory as an Intervention in Development Studies

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Under Development: Gender

Part of the book series: Gender, Development and Social Change ((GDSC))

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Abstract

Feminist legal theory has not articulated any particular position concerning development studies or the role of law in development.2 Feminists and gender experts, however, have engaged law as part of development strategies, just as legal scholars have articulated a story about the role that law has been attributed in development.3 The purpose of this chapter is to describe both, showing how activists and experts could profit from the sophisticated understanding of law that feminist legal theory has matured, but also, how the particular pressure that the question of development places on political agendas could be useful for theoretical development. I start with a description of four feminist points of view about the law, then proceed to explain two feminist projects in law and their relationship to development, and finish with some ideas about how setting the two side by side might illuminate avenues of inquiry and critical insights.

Full Professor of Law, Director of Research and Doctoral Programs, Facultad de Derecho, Universidad de los Andes.

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Authors
  1. Isabel Cristina Jaramillo Sierra
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Switzerland

    Christine Verschuur (Senior Lecturer) (Senior Lecturer)

  2. Institute of Research for Development (CESSMA), Université Paris Diderot, France

    Isabelle Guérin (Senior Research Fellow) (Senior Research Fellow)

  3. National School of Agronomic Education (ENFA), France

    Hélène Guétat-Bernard (Professor of Rural Sociology) (Professor of Rural Sociology)

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© 2014 Isabel Cristina Jaramillo Sierra

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Sierra, I.C.J. (2014). Feminist Legal Theory as an Intervention in Development Studies. In: Verschuur, C., Guérin, I., Guétat-Bernard, H. (eds) Under Development: Gender. Gender, Development and Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137356826_7

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